Wednesday, 3 October 2012

Sitting in a café one afternoon, I heard someone call my name. I turned to see an acquaintance I first met in a fitness class.

“Oh my God, Sara, it’s been ages since we last saw each other,” she gushed. I smiled. I just wanted to be alone at that moment. Alone with my book, wanting to escape to a fictional universe, where my problems are locked away in the real world.

“How are you?” The acquaintance (I refuse to call her my friend) continued with her signature high-pitch, cheerful, saccharine sweet voice.

“Not bad,” I replied and shrugged. She stepped back and looked at me up and down, not unlike a judge would look at a cow in a country fair.

“Oh, Sara, don’t tell me….” she had an expression like she just heard she was announced winner of a beauty pageant. “Sara, are you pregnant?” Then she shrieked! I thought this was getting to be too much. She was getting on my nerves but still I continued to smile and act diplomatic.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Then an awkward silence as both of us stood there. “Well,” the acquaintance was back to her cheerful self, “I better get going. My latte is getting cold.”

“It is.” I said with just a little bit of sarcasm. She said her goodbye and walked away. I sat down feeling deflated. Maybe I should have told her that I don’t look as fit and slim as she was because I’ve been lounging in my couch the past week depressed that our first attempt with fertility treatment didn’t work. That I have been loafing around in my house in my pajamas watching the boob tube for days on end or sleeping during the day because I can’t sleep at night. That I have been eating lots of cookies, cakes and chips hoping, but not succeeding, to feel better. That I haven’t been exercising because I don’t really see the point anymore. This getting pregnant business is way harder than it seemed. Why do many women I know seem to just get pregnant without any trouble? I just want to crawl into a deep dark cave and stay there. But I did not. That day, I forced myself to take a shower and change and get out of the house to hopefully get out of my self-aggravated misery.

Yup, I should have told her all of that. I should have at least told her that to ask an infertile woman who has been trying hard to conceive if she was pregnant felt like a cruel joke. But somehow everything went too fast for me to give a thoughtful response.